


Things Unspoken

by Mohini



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alcohol, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-14 08:00:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1258906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mohini/pseuds/Mohini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wears the masks so well, it's hard to remember sometimes that in the end, he is just a boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things Unspoken

It’s four in the morning, and I am currently running behind Pansy Parkinson through the corridors of Hogwarts. She showed up in our dorm a few minutes ago, telling me I needed to come with her immediately. Seven years of school and an entire childhood spent with her has taught me that questioning a direct order from Pansy is a very, very bad idea. So here I am, a robe pulled over hastily donned clothing, my hair barely tamed and bolting through corridors at a speed that a girl who is barely five feet tall should really not be able to attain. She practically skids to a stop outside the entry to Hermione Granger’s suite. Hermione is Head Girl this year and the position comes with a private suite. I try not to be annoyed when I am hit with a muffling charm as Pansy rattles off the password. She and Hermione make a very odd couple, but somehow it works. Given who I’ve been dating the last several months, it’s not like I have much room to say anything.

Upon entering the rooms, I realize that the Floo is lit. “Where are we going?” I ask Pansy, as she grabs a handful of Floo powder and turns to me. “Hog’s Head,” she tells me curtly before tossing in the powder and stepping into the flames. I follow behind her and step out of the Floo on the other side to a familiar dingy pub. I am becoming increasingly worried. Harry and Ron went out tonight, and although I didn’t really want to let him out of my sight, I trusted Weasley when he swore to keep him under control. Yesterday was the anniversary of Sirius Black’s death. Harry was bouncing between distant and outright mean all day. Personally, I thought a round of drinks was the last thing he needed, but I got over-ruled by the redheaded idiot. I follow Pansy into a back room, where I decide that I am never, ever letting myself get outvoted again. Harry has erected a shield charm around himself, effectively cutting him off from anyone in the room. He has a mostly empty bottle of Firewhisky in front of him. That wouldn’t worry me if it weren’t for the two empty ones already on the table. The boy has an alcohol tolerance that is the stuff of legends, but even for him, this is not going to end well. He is clearly half delirious, his eyes unfocused and his body barely upright in his chair.

I turn to Ron, who is standing with Seamus Finnigan and it is obvious that he has been on the receiving end of a few of the hexes Harry favors when he gets pissed. One of them, a nasty little beauty he learned from Pansy, has Weasley in possession of some very attractive boils that I happen to know will worsen every time he attempts to cast a countercharm. I pull my wand from the wrist holder I wear even in sleep and mutter the correct countercharm for him. He nods gratefully at me. Knowing he is never silent by choice, I then release the silencing hex. “I’m sorry!” he squeaks. I don’t have an answer for that. I know, logically, that he loves Harry like a brother, and that once Harry gets like this, there really is no stopping him. So I hold a hand out, palm up, to silence his apologies.

I step to just outside the boundary of Harry’s shield charm and kneel. “Harry,” I say softly. Tear bright eyes look at me for a moment, then drop back to the floor. “Come on now, drop the shield,” I tell him. He knows I can’t release it. I’m just hoping he’s aware enough to know who I am and let me in. He’s cast a silencing charm as well, and I can’t hear his words as his lips move, but I understand none the less. “Out, all of you,” I say sharply to the others. Pansy takes charge, herding them out the door and closing it behind her. I turn back to Harry. He looks so vulnerable like this. It only ever happens when he is drunk. He has spent too many years expected to be this perfect hero and he wears the mask so well that it’s sometimes hard to remember that like me he is just a boy with too many expectations heaped on his head.

“Drop the shield, Harry,” I tell him. He blinks a few times, as if he doesn’t understand me, and then he raises his wand and the shimmering barrier is gone. “Give me your wand,” I tell him, and he complies. He doesn’t really have to use the wand, but when he is pissed he can’t focus well enough to cast much of anything without it. Sometimes I’ve grateful for that. I move a little closer, one hand out. He looks so lost. I hate seeing him like this. I place my hand on his shoulder and he melts. Whatever force of will was holding him upright evaporates and he lands heavily against me. I wrap my arms around him, taking his weight and trying to somehow convey comfort that I know he needs. His shoulders begin to shake, and I am holding a bawling Harry Potter, drunk out of his mind and completely out of control.

“I’ve got you,” I whisper. The words have become so much more for us. He said them during that horrible flight from the room of requirement, while the Fiendfyre lapped at our heels. A day later, he wrapped his arms around me and held tight as my parents were dragged off by the Aurors after the battle ended, whispering the same words in my ear. I said them to him during the endless nights in those early months after it was all over, when he woke in the middle of the night screaming. They are our touchstone, the phrase that never fails to penetrate deep enough to be heard. It seemed like hours, before he was finally cried out. He stared at me with red rimmed eyes, looking hollowed out and still so lost.

“Take me home,” he whispered, his voice rasping and barely there. I nodded, casting a lightening charm and lifting him as I stood. Even though I am taller by several inches, Harry has always been much more solid than I am. Given that he was barely holding himself on his feet, it took everything I had to keep him from falling even with the charm helping out. The main room of the pub was empty and the sky was beginning to go pink outside. I tossed a handful of powder into the floo and held him against myself as I called out the directions to Granger’s suite. A moment later, I stepped out onto the hearth, Harry barely conscious against me. She was waiting in the little sitting room with Pansy and Weasley. Ron rose quickly and helped me haul Harry out the door and down to their dorm. Once we got Harry into the bed, Ron headed out.

I climbed into the bed beside a completely insensible Harry and laid down, an arm around him so that I would know if he woke up. As an afterthought, I climbed back out of the bed and grabbed a hangover draught. Lifting him up a bit on the pillows, I tipped the liquid into his mouth, telling him softly to drink it down for me. Thankfully, Harry is an obedient drunk and complied readily before going right back to sleep. Once he was asleep and unable to object, I recited a simple sobering charm, knowing that if I didn’t he was going to feel like death come morning.

Thanks to the heavy curtains, the room was still nice and dark when Harry finally stirred in the late afternoon. I had been awake for hours, sitting beside him and brooding. He woke with a bang, eyes shooting open as he looked around the room in a panic. “Harry,” I said, my voice quiet but firm. He looked at me, finally focusing enough to know where he was. “How are you feeling?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “Not half as bad as I probably should. Did you give me something?”

“Hangover draught before you passed out last night,” I replied. “And a sobrius charm once you were out. Three bottles of Ogden’s Old, Harry? What were you thinking?”

“Not thinking,” he mumbled.

I rolled my eyes. “That was pretty obvious. You know you hexed Weasley? Twice?”

“Damn,” he mutters. “What else did I do?” The question is quiet, and sad eyes stare at me, as though he is certain I am going to be angry with him.

“Shield charm, with a muffliato incorporated. You didn’t hex anyone but Weasley, and he probably deserved it. Pansy came and got me. You didn’t fight me, if that’s what you’re worried about. I think you were too pissed by the time I got there to have been able to try it, honestly.”

“So I was good?” he asks, needing reassurance that he hasn’t done anything really stupid.

“I don’t know that I would define drinking yourself stupid as being good exactly, but you did nothing regrettable. Now, what do I need to do for you? I know you have to be hurting.”

“Do you have any of the good headache cure? The purple one? And maybe a stomach settling potion?” I went to his trunk and pulled out the potions box that I kept there. I had learned a long time ago that I needed to keep a duplicate stash of my potions in his room. I pulled out the bottles he had requested and handed them to him. He drank both quickly and lay down against his pillows with his eyes screwed shut for a few minutes while they took effect. When he opened his eyes again, they were much clearer, and the remaining hint of panic had left them.

“I need a shower,” he declared, standing up and stretching before stalking into the bathroom. In a few minutes, I heard the shower turned on and made myself comfortable once more in my chair. It was possible that I had created a monster when I took it upon myself to revamp Harry’s bedraggled appearance earlier in the year. The boy could now manage to spend even more time than I did getting himself ready. When he finally emerged dressed only from the waist down, I considered hexing him for being a tease. Then I got a good look at his arms.

“Harry,” I said, my voice quiet but the tone making it clear that I wanted an explanation. He looked at me, guilt written clearly on his face.

“Um, I don’t actually remember,” he told me.

“Weasley would have said something if you did it in front of him. Which means you must have snuck off at some point. Do you remember at all?” He shook his head sadly, looking like a little lost puppy.

“Can you fix it?”

I wanted to scream at him. We had been through this too many times. I had spent countless evenings coaxing a blade away from him, healing the marks it left behind. He was everyone’s hero. I suspected I was the only one who knew what he did to calm down, to keep up the mask that he wore so well. I also knew that he was perfectly capable of healing them himself. He had allowed me to see them in confession. He wanted me to know what he had done. Without saying it, he had told me that he needs me to take care of him and make it better. I took one arm in my hands and looked at the marks. One deep cut, several shallow ones. I ran the tip of my wand over each, sealing the skin and placing a protective charm on the areas to keep them from getting infected. Then I repeated the action for his other arm, this one a tracery of small, shallow slices. He watched me as I worked, sad eyes focused on my hands. When I was finished, he curled up in a ball on my lap, looking like a rather oversized child. I stroked his tousled hair, peppering kisses across his face.

“It’s alright, love. You were drunk. It happens,” I reassure him, knowing that after a night like that, he is vulnerable and needs to know he is loved.

“Thank you,” he whispered, kissing me before standing back up and crossing the room to his wardrobe, from which he pulled a crisp oxford and warm jumper. The oversized castoffs of his cousin are a distant memory now, and his wardrobe rivals mine. I wrap my arms around him in a hug before heading into the bathroom myself. Rather like the potions, I keep clothes here as well.

An hour later, we walk hand in hand into the Gryffindor common room. No one much notices me here anymore. Early in the year there were a few issues, but once it become clear that Harry really would not hesitate before hexing his housemates, it died down quickly. We made our way down to the Great Hall in time for dinner, and I notice that Weasley is examining Harry while attempting not to be obvious. Subtlety is not one of his gifts. Outside of his room, Harry has morphed back into the perfect poster boy. I return Weasley’s questioning look with a simple nod, telling him that everything is alright. Despite his utter failure last night, I know he loves Harry, and that he does his best.


End file.
